Post Office job cuts a slaughter union —
As many as 6,000 SA Post Office workers — more than half the existing workforce — stand to lose their jobs by the end of March. But the Communication Workers Union is fighting to reduce the number of retrenchments proposed.
The number of retrenchments at the beleaguered institution are laid out in the business rescue plan published by business rescue practitioners Anoosh Rooplan and Juanito Damons on November 23.
The resulting notice of possible termination of posts, in line with section 189 of the Labour Relations Act, was published on December 31 and then distributed to employees.
The Post Office entered into business rescue on July 10 after being placed under provisional liquidation after litigation by creditors, including landlords to whom the Post Office had failed to pay rent.
According to the Business Rescue Plan (BRP), the Post Office has debt of R4.5bn. Of this, R3.9bn is owed to Postbank, with about R400m owed in rental arrears.
The operating losses, states the BRP, are “due to declines in revenue and an unsustainable cost base”, with the amount of money earned being less than half the money spent on operating costs. The biggest cost is salaries and wages, with the Post Office paying its employees R1.50 for every rand it earns.
In July, at the start of the business rescue, there were 894 operational Post Office branches, but only 113 of them were profitable. This was after 384 branches had closed since the 2022 financial year.
But of these closures, only 47 were planned. The remaining 337, some of which were profitable, closed due to nonpayment of rent and utilities.
While the business rescue practitioners plan to negotiate with landlords to “reopen certain branches”, the branch closures resulted in about 815 more employees than needed.
“Although not all of these employees will be dismissed for operational reasons, these ... employees will possibly be affected by the retrenchments,” states the BRP.
The largest staff contingent facing retrenchment are the retail staff, of which up to 3,000 stand to lose their jobs, along with about 275 drivers, about 200 employees who have been at home due to ill-health for extended periods, along with three of 19 group executive and general manager positions.
The remaining retrenchments will come from district manager posts — a post that is to be abolished — and postmen and postwomen, although approximate numbers of employees in these posts are not provided.
While there are 1,023 branches nationwide (of which 894 are operational), the BRP is looking to reduce that by half, to 600 branches.
Although 6,000 jobs are to be cut from a staff complement of 11,038, the business rescue practitioners state their plan saves the remaining 5,038 posts, which would all have been lost in the event of the Post Office being liquidated, as well as the workers running the risk of receiving no dividends from the liquidation process.
But the BRP’s success depends on a remaining R2.4bn appropriation and an additional R3.8bn equity funding coming from the Treasury.
Should everything proceed as planned, the retrenchment process is expected to be completed by March 31.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU), which is the largest union in the Post Office, representing about 34% of all employees, intends to stem the job losses.
“Clearly the business rescue plan is not worker friendly in any way. It is creditors seeing what they can get out of the process,” said CWU collective bargaining co-ordinator Nathen Bowers, who mentioned that more than 70% of the creditors voted for large-scale retrenchments prior to the business rescue plan being developed.
Bowers said the first sitting of the CCMA for the appointment of a facilitator for the retrenchment process, is on January 26.
While workers were “always going to be the casualties” of the business rescue plan, 6,000 job losses was “slaughter”, particularly with the current unemployment rate, said Bowers.
But he said that regulations of the Independent Communication Authority of SA (Icasa) state how many Post Office branches there should be in an area, based on the population.
The CWU would be “looking into” how the retrenchment of 6,000 workers aligned with these Icasa regulations.
Asked for a copy of the applicable regulations, CWU president Clyde Mervin sent GroundUp the 2011 Code of Practice for the SA Postal Industry and the Postal Services Act of 1998.
The code states Icasa had a regulatory function “to promote a universal postal that will ensure equal access for all citizens to a basic better service that is reasonable and accessible to all people in the country regardless of their physical location and at a uniform rate and affordable prices of postage”.
The code also sets minimum standards of conduct within the postal industry. Bowers said that the Post Office, together with other state-owned companies, was supposed to play a developmental role in the country.
“In rural areas, the Post Office is of utmost importance, even in towns and cities. It has the best network in the country.”
Bowers said that the provisional liquidation of the Post Office and the subsequent business rescue plan were developments that the union blamed “squarely on the mismanagement through various administrations”, particularly given the findings of corruption at the Post Office by the public protector in 2016, among which was the irregular appointment of labour brokers from 2002 to 2012, which cost the Post Office R2.7bn during that period.
The Post Office has also not been paying over employees’ pension fund deductions to the Post Office Retirement Fund since April 2020, despite 7.5% being deducted from workers’ salaries as part of their retirement fund contributions.
This is also despite a scathing Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judgment delivered on December 31 2021 ordering Sapo to pay the retirement fund arrears, as well as 9.75% interest on the outstanding amount, within five days of the order.
A Post Office manager, who cannot be named as he had no authority to speak to the media, said that staff retirement funds contributions were still being deducted, but not paid over.
GroundUp attempted to contact the Post Office Retirement Fund principal officer Mike Faasen to confirm this, but was unsuccessful.
The Post Office manager said that while workers opting for retrenchment were reimbursed for the retirement fund deductions, they were not receiving the interest on their payments over the last three years. Also, the contribution from their employer to the retirement fund was supposed to be 13.5% of their salary, and they were losing out on the interest this would have earned them.
GroundUp calculated that by May 2023 the Post Office owed about R1bn in untransferred deductions to the Post Office Retirement Fund.
THE BUSINESS RESCUE PLAN IS NOT WORKER FRIENDLY IN ANY WAY. IT IS CREDITORS SEEING WHAT THEY CAN GET OUT OF THE PROCESS